


Glass Slowly Breaking

by neonkorok



Series: The Bright Hand Oneshots [4]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Angst, Crying, Cults, Family Issues, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Like, Lots of Crying, Near Death Experiences, and posys, but it's mostly because she's grieving, but she still doesn't get it, but that's just how it is, cothea is kind of a bitch, disillusioning oneself with the cult they grew up in, enjoy, even after we beat the current main big bad, halia is just a bitch because that's who she is, kym is a sad girl, mostly - Freeform, nothing even happens in this it's just kym being sad and not getting help, please give her a break, seriously there was so much angst it's not even funny, she really needs it, so i guess, to the extreme, which is just CHEAP, whoo boy when i tell you i had feels after our last session i mean i had FEELS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24551305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonkorok/pseuds/neonkorok
Summary: After the death and destruction of the day, Kym finally returns to her family in hopes that they will help her make sense of things.She leaves even more confused (and hurt) than before.
Relationships: Kymopoleia "Kym" Ybdis & The Tragedy Group
Series: The Bright Hand Oneshots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1716025
Kudos: 4





	Glass Slowly Breaking

**Author's Note:**

> I literally just spent a solid two hours pounding this out and did not edit it AT ALL but I'm sad and tired and I just want to go to bed so. Here you are! Enjoy the rambling angst train that was my brain after our latest session and The Death Incident.

It still didn’t feel real. After everything that had happened that night, standing there in the open courtyard with a broken statue of some long-dead hero, Kym felt like the world had ceased to spin around its axis. There was no great storm, no pounding rains and thunder to drown out the cacophony in her head. There was nothing but the stillness of night.

The others had all gone back into the castle, retreating to the solitude of their shared bedroom, but Kym couldn’t bring herself to join them. Not yet. She had things she needed to do first.

A shiver ran down her spine as she realized that she’d just repeated something Triton had said before he ran off into the darkness. Before she _let him go._

It was clear that the others didn’t agree with her decision, but they weren’t pressing the matter just yet. She was grateful for that. She wasn’t sure if she could handle an interrogation on top of everything else. She didn’t think so.

Something moved near the edges of her vision, and she spun around to face the presumed threat, roped raised in a threatening manner. She froze as she saw her father standing before the entrance to the slave quarters, arms crossed and looking more angry than intimidated at her makeshift weapon. She quickly lowered the rope and cleared her suddenly dry throat.

“Father.” she managed to croak out.

“Daughter.” Posys responded in kind. “What are you doing?”

“Well, I suppose I’m just standing right now.” Kym shifted her weight uncomfortably.

Posys sighed, sounding very put-out. “If you’re not doing anything useful, why don’t you come inside? Your sister has been asking about you.”

Kym stiffened. She had no idea why Cothea would be asking for her after…after what happened to Leu. She gave a tense nod to Posys and followed him inside.

The quarters were somehow both barren and cluttered at the same time. Dust and dirt covered the floor, and the beds looked like they were one strong breeze away from crumbling into splinters. Half of them didn’t even have mattresses. Kym tried to imagine her family sleeping on them for the ten weeks they’d likely been here, and she felt a bit queasy. How different this was from life back home.

Kym looked around, taking stock of the small crowd of Zora lazing about. They were all definitely her family, but there was a significant decrease in their numbers compared to how many of them there had been before they were taken to this world. She hoped that didn’t mean anything, but was already grieving for them in the more realistic half of her brain.

A few people glanced her way as she entered the room, but they quickly looked away. Kym swallowed thickly. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t _right._

(A small part of her wondered if Triton might have been right when he said that they had never really been a family. She punched that part of her in the face and stuffed it where the sun wouldn’t shine.)

Cothea sat by herself on one of the empty bed frames, looking down at her feet. Kym made her way over, sitting on a mattressed bed across from her.

“You came.” Cothea noted.

“Of course.” Kym said.

Cothea snorted. “You say that like I should have expected it.”

Kym was silent for a moment, not sure how to respond to that. She gasped as Cothea lifted her head and she saw the redness of her eyes and the tear tracks on her cheeks.

“Oh, sister. What’s happened to us?” Kym asked, reaching out a hand to rest it on Cothea’s head. Cothea shook it off, her antenna swinging wildly with the movement.

“You left.” Cothea told her. “You left, and then that _stupid_ portal showed up, and Triton turned traitor and led us all into a life of hard labor for no reward, and we were forced to follow like a herd of _sheep._ ”

Kym lowered her gaze, then looked back up in confusion.

“Where was Tethus when this happened?”

Cothea laughed, but it held no humor. She opened her mouth to respond, but someone else beat her to it.

“Tethus was nothing but a fraud and a coward.” said Erud, a lobster-tailed man with a mean streak a mile wide, instead.

 _“What?”_ Kym was scandalized. Such talk was paramount to blasphemy.

“A lot has changed since you’ve been gone, dear sister.” Cothea gestured around her. “If you can’t tell, this place is a pigsty. Do you really think a high and mighty, enlightened man like Tethus would allow himself to live in conditions such as these?”

Kym shook her head forcefully. “Of course not! None of you should have had to live in a place like this.”

“And yet, the rest of us all sucked it up and dealt with it.” Erud grunted out. “What do you think could scare us so much that we’d just take this lying down?”

Cothea leaned back on her elbows to look up at the ceiling. “Tethus, to his credit, did try to launch an escape. However, he didn’t include any of the rest of us in his plan. He stole away in the dead of night when he thought there would be a rotation of the guards. He miscalculated, though, and got caught not twenty feet from that door over there.

“The guards weren’t too happy with him. They brought him back in, spluttering and making a fuss, waking us all up in the process. They told us what Tethus had tried to do, and they said that they had to make an example of him. Show us what would happen if we disobeyed.”

“They cut off his head and we all got front row tickets.” Erud spat on the ground. “Good riddance, if you ask me.”

Kym’s head was swimming. “But…he’s immortal.” She turned wide, pleading eyes on Cothea. “He _couldn’t_ die. He’s been around since the _founding of Hyrule—”_

“Kym, sweetie, I know you’ve always been a little slow on the uptake, but I think it should be pretty clear by now what was really going on.” Cothea said, her voice holding no mercy.

And it was clear. Painfully clear, like a glass palace that had been shattered into millions of tiny little pieces, so close together and so far-spread that they were there every direction you went. Kym was stranded in the middle of the shards, her feet already a bloody mess, but she couldn’t even stay in one place because the very thing that had smashed the palace to bits was looming right over her shoulder, breathing on her neck, and she had to _run._

“He was a fraud.” Kym whispered, feeling the last tethers she had to the past slowly break away.

“He was.” Cothea said. “And we all believed him.”

It was suddenly all too much. She hadn’t seen her family in months, but now she just wanted to get _away._ She was surprised to find that she didn’t want to be alone, but rather that she wanted to flee to the safety of her friends. It was an odd feeling, to be surrounded by the only people you’d ever known and wish to be with near strangers instead. She didn’t know how she felt about it.

“Why did you want to speak to me?” she asked, desperate to move on so the overwhelming urge to run would fade to a more manageable level.

Cothea huffed. “I don’t know. I guess…it’s stupid, but I thought that you being here might help things make more sense. You’re my older sister. You’ve always been there for me when things have gone to shit in the past, and you’ve always been able to fix them. I guess I just wished you could do that again.”

“And…did I help?” Kym asked, though she already suspected the answer.

“Honestly? I think you just made things worse.”

Kym nodded, eyes trained on her clenched fists. She didn’t trust herself not to burst into tears if she spoke, so she stayed silent.

Cothea had no such qualms against speaking through tears. “I just wish things could go back to how they were.” she said, voicing Kym’s own thoughts. “I just want her _back.”_

Kym moved over to her bed and wrapped her arms around her sister as she began to sob. Tears began to pour down Kym’s own face, and she made no effort to stifle them as her sister shook in her arms.

“She didn’t want to stay.” Cothea gasped out. “She never did. Do you know how many times I’ve had to talk her out of leaving the family behind? How many times I’ve had to keep myself from agreeing to go with her, if only so she wouldn’t get herself killed? Maybe if I’d just let her leave, if I’d gone _with_ her, she’d still _be here.”_

“You can’t live your life in what-if’s.” Kym cautioned her. “Such things only lead to regret and pain. I know it hurts now, I know that you’d do anything to get her back, and I would, too, but—”

“Would you _shut up_ with your pompous bullshit?!” Cothea suddenly screeched, pulling out of Kym’s arms. “Naydra, why can’t you even _grieve_ like a normal person?”

Kym blinked at her in shock. “I—”

Cothea pushed herself to her feet, none of her usual grace in the movement.

“I should have let dad shoo you away.” Cothea spat, wiping her face with the back of her arm. “He was right. You only bring more problems.”

Kym watched her walk away, disappearing through the entrance to the quarters without another word. She sat and stared for what felt like an eternity before a new face filled her vision. Halia.

“Mother.” Kym whispered. “Mother, what am I supposed to do?”

Halia smoothed the fins ringing her head, a sad smile on her face. “My dear, I don’t think there is any right thing to do.”

A broken sob tore out of Kym’s throat and her eyes burned. “She’s _dead.”_

“She is.” Halia said.

“It’s my fault.” Kym said.

“It is.” Halia pulled Kym into a hug. “But it will be okay.”

“How?” Kym pulled away enough to look her mother in the eyes. “How could you say that?”

“It just takes time.” Halia moved a hand forward to wipe the tears off Kym’s cheeks, but she slapped it away. Halia’s eyes burned, but with anger, not tears.

“How could you _say_ that?” Kym repeated. “You’re supposed to tell me that it wasn’t my fault, that the king and the necromancer were the ones who took Leu’s life, not me.”

“I’m also not supposed to lie.” Halia said, her motherly tone now gone in lieu of a more chastising one. “Kymopoleia, I will not lie to you. You disappeared when we needed you most. You weren’t there when we were captured, you weren’t there when Triton left us all for dead to play prince, and you weren’t there when Tethus was killed and his transgressions were revealed.”

Something about her pitch at the end there caught Kym’s attention, and she stared at her mother incredulously. “You knew.” she said. Not a question, but a fact.

“I’ve always known.” Halia scoffed. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe that koi shit? An immortal Zora who’d been around since the creation of Hyrule, who’s never before been written about in history books and who is completely foreign to the Zora of the Domain? Please.”

“What happened to not lying?” Kym was shaking now, and she didn’t know if it was from exhaustion, grief, or anger. Maybe all three.

“There’s no point in it now. Not when everyone knows the truth.” Halia stood. “Now, I think it’s best if you leave. I’m sure your little friends miss you.”

There was a finality in that statement, and more derisiveness than Kym felt her traveling companions deserved.

“What will you do now?” Kym asked, still stubbornly remaining seated. “What will become of the family?”

“We’re not much of a family anymore.” Halia said. “I imagine we’ll all scatter to the winds, try to use our skills to make a life for ourselves here.”

“You’re not even going to try to go home?” Kym stood, her hands twitching dangerously towards her quarterstaff, though she wasn’t sure who it was she wanted to fight. Maybe the bed frame. It was ridiculously uncomfortable. “You’re just going to sit here and take this?”

Halia shrugged. “Why wouldn’t we? Hyrule, Qamhelden…they’re a lot alike. There’s nothing special about where we came from. There’s water to be found all over this land. We’ll figure something out.”

“What about me?” Kym asked, her voice impossibly small.

“You don’t have a place with us anymore.” Halia said bluntly. “You’re simultaneously too stuck in your ways and too fickle. Go play hero, try to save the world. Maybe we’ll see each other again in the plains of rest.”

Kym was too angry for words, so she instead stormed past her mother, making sure their shoulders knocked painfully together. She erupted out into the courtyard, running full-speed back towards the castle. She didn’t stop until she made her way inside and got herself lost in the dark hallways. She sat against a wall with her head in her hands, too angry to cry but too hurt not to try. She found herself wishing that someone would just happen by and comfort her. Not just anyone, but one of the others. Anemone. Calendor. Mik. Roon. Hell, she’d even take Plu. She just wanted someone to hold her and tell her that it would all be all right, the _right_ way.

Nobody walked by, and she got up an hour later when her stiff muscles forced her to get up and move around. She picked her way through the halls until she found their bedroom. Nobody was awake.

She sighed, making her way over to the empty bed. She tore off her weapons, throwing them to the ground beside her bed with probably too much force, then burrowed under the covers. The tears still did not come. She lay still, eyes locked on the wall before her, feeling nothing but numb. She stayed there until the sun rose in the morning, when she picked up her weapons and joined the others down in the dining hall that had been the scene of multiple murders and one near-death the night before, and Kym found herself too nauseous to even look at the plate set before her. Anemone was glaring at her, clearly wanting her to eat at least _something,_ but she ignored her entirely. Instead, she looked at the empty seat meant for the king and tried not to let the tears that had finally come fall from her eyes.

It was a losing battle, but don’t let it be said that she didn’t try.

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


End file.
